Michigan voters just sent Dr. Abdul El-Sayed to the U.S. Senate. His education is a little different from the usual résumé: undergraduate degrees in biology and political science from the University of Michigan, an MD from Columbia, and a doctorate in public health from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Then came work as a physician, epidemiologist, professor, and director of Detroit's Health Department. The University of Michigan's Ford School lays out that path, and the Associated Press reports his Senate victory. That's a lot of preparation for a job that touches people's lives.
Let me put it plainly: Dr. El-Sayed is probably the most prepared, intelligent professional candidate to run for the Senate in Michigan in the last hundred years. A doctor who studied public health, led a major city health department, and taught policy is bringing one heck of a toolkit to the Senate. Michigan didn't send somebody to Washington who needs a crash course in how policy lands on real people.
And what does every single reporter want to focus on?? Whether Israel has a right to exist. As a substitute for the real question, it's a stupid loop: Israel exists, and its people deserve safety and dignity, just as Palestinians do.
The question an American senator should answer is whether Israel's government should receive billions in U.S. support, and what conditions should come with that money.
That $3.8 billion a year is just the usual security-aid framework, according to the Congressional Research Service—not the whole bill. A 2025 Brown University Costs of War and Quincy Institute analysis put direct military aid to Israel at $21.7 billion from October 2023 through September 2025. Add $9.65 billion to $12.07 billion for related U.S. military operations in the region, and the total reaches $31.35 billion to $33.77 billion across the first two years. That regional-operations money was spent by U.S. forces, not handed to Israel, but it is still part of the price tag.
Meanwhile, AMERICAN veterans are still sleeping In cardboard boxes under bridges, and AMERICAN families are still figuring out how to cover school meals.
We literally can't feed our schoolchildren lunch .... but we can provide universal healthcare to Israel!! If we can find billions for aid abroad, we MUST have an honest argument about why basic help at home is still so damn hard to get.
Israel has universal health coverage, paid maternity leave, public education, and targeted housing assistance. The OECD outlines its maternity benefits and housing support. None of that makes Israel perfect, and none of it means people there deserve less safety. It shows that governments make choices.
We can care about civilians abroad and still demand better for veterans, working families, and schoolchildren here.
That's the conversation I want somebody in Washington to answer.